So far I've mostly been keeping my stuff in mono. I know that panning is important though.
Under what circumstanes should panning be used? Any general tips would be great.
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Essentially, you want to use panning to seperate sounds in your mix. Think of mixing as putting objects in a 3D space. When you go see a band live, you don't have the vocallists, drummer, guitarists and bassist all standing in the same spot do you? That's physically impossible. For similiar reasons, having all the sound sources coming from the same spot in a mix does not make sense, and leaving sounds to fight over the same space in a mix is not a good idea as the more dominant sounds will drown out the others.
Back to the 3D space thing, reverb can be used to push sounds back further in your mix. So you have panning (left and right) and reverb (front and back), and can essentially place sounds wherever you choose in this virtual space.
So you should use panning whenever you want to make sounds more audible / change where they are in the mix. In general, the bass and drums should be panned to the center, but for anything else you can get creative. Place sounds apart from each other and they will have a much cleaner, more audible sound.
Last edited by Derris-Kharlan (July 13, 2012 2:03 am)
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it is also a cool effect to pan something hard in one direction and introduce a fast delay in the opposite channel.. it makes a sound sound wide.. like a wall of sound.. careful of too any low frequencies when doing this though.. the brain is not used to hearing lower frequencies this way.. stuff starting from around 400hz and lower should start to be less stereo.. leaving the bass mono or almost mono unless you are trying to create a really strange underwater effect or something
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Thanks guys. I'll remember to keep low sounds panned to the center and to move higher sounds away from the center when they aren't audible.
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I have a question about a specific VST that I'm using. It's called CVPiano GVI modeled
It seems to take high notes and pan them to the right, while low notes get panned to the left. The pan option is set on center though.
I don't want the high notes panned so hard to the right. What should I do?
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Brackleforth wrote:
I have a question about a specific VST that I'm using. It's called CVPiano GVI modeled
It seems to take high notes and pan them to the right, while low notes get panned to the left. The pan option is set on center though.
I don't want the high notes panned so hard to the right. What should I do?
a lot of piano synths and keyboards try to simulate the way a real piano is. When you are sitting at a piano the lower sounds are toward your left and the higher sounds toward your right, with the middle octave in the center. It is acceptable to leave it like this, but a reverb is usually necessary to make it gel. also, if the separation seems too much then there are tools you can use to shrink the stereo width. If there are really low (below 100hz) stereo sounds i would suggest using an eq to roll them off a little..
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Phil Harmonic wrote:
Brackleforth wrote:I have a question about a specific VST that I'm using. It's called CVPiano GVI modeled
It seems to take high notes and pan them to the right, while low notes get panned to the left. The pan option is set on center though.
I don't want the high notes panned so hard to the right. What should I do?a lot of piano synths and keyboards try to simulate the way a real piano is. When you are sitting at a piano the lower sounds are toward your left and the higher sounds toward your right, with the middle octave in the center. It is acceptable to leave it like this, but a reverb is usually necessary to make it gel. also, if the separation seems too much then there are tools you can use to shrink the stereo width. If there are really low (below 100hz) stereo sounds i would suggest using an eq to roll them off a little..
oh also. .remember.. there are really no real rules. just rules of thumb.. your ears are the best decider.. for stereo stuff.. a good set of headphones helps a lot.. the stereo field does not have to be completely mono in the bass and sub region. but it generally sounds wonky if it gets too wide.. USE YOUR EARS! 
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Thanks for the info - it sounds like I ought to shrink the stereo width. Can I use Audacity to do that ? What effect or option is that under ?
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Brackleforth wrote:
Thanks for the info - it sounds like I ought to shrink the stereo width. Can I use Audacity to do that ? What effect or option is that under ?
hmm not sure if audacity has something for that. there are tons of plugins for that though. just make sure its not something that is adding delays or comb filters.. try the free one on this page
http://www.retrosampling.se/vst.htm.. the "stereo contractor." I havent used that one, but it looks promising.